A working group of the National Advisory Council (NAC) has suggested that 25-40 per cent land in city development plans be reserved for housing the urban poor. It has also proposed a moratorium on forced evictions.

“There should be no displacement without prior and full resettlement and rehabilitation”, says the NAC's Working Group on Urban Poverty recommendations in the Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY), a Central scheme for the urban poor.

According to a committee headed by Dr Pronab Sen, Principal Adviser, Planning Commission, the slum population in India is expected to touch 93.06 million this year.

The working group has also said that an official drive should be conducted in all cities and towns to identify the government land encroached by land mafias. “Such land should be developed for the slum residents with no compensation for the land mafias and officials, who should be punished under the law of the land,” said the draft, which is open for public comments till November 15.

PROPERTY RIGHTS

The NAC group also proposed full property rights for slum-dwellers and de-linking of basic rights, such as drinking water and sanitation, from issues of land tenure and the legal status of the land on which a person is dwelling.

“For slum-dwellers on tenable land, full property rights must be guaranteed together with the in situ development option…. RAY should therefore mandate individual title to land within the redeveloped site on which tenements currently stand,” it said.

Calling for universal coverage, the NAC group has also proposed that the ‘ultra poor', such the homeless, construction workers living in camps and domestic helps living in owner's houses, be included in RAY. At present, the guidelines cover only residents of slum settlements.

HOUSING NORMS

Recommending subsidy for “affordable housing” under RAY, the draft says that down-payments should be done away with and replaced with equated monthly instalments.

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